Ameriquest was one of the first sub prime mortgage companies in USA it was founded in Orange County, California in 1979. Its original name was Long Beach Savings & Loan. Ameriquest mortgage was owned by ACC Capital Holdings which was a private company. Ameriquest got engaged in a number of lawsuits for malpractices starting from 1996 and they were finally bought out by Citigroup on August 2007 and were shutdown. Citigroup also acquired Argent Mortgage and AMC mortgage services from ACC Capital Holdings.

Ameriquest were one of the leading sub prime lenders and advertised their services on TV in the press and came to be widely known in the mortgage business as one of the leading mortgage companies. Ameriquest was one of the first mortgage companies to recognize the power of computers and the internet and made extensive use of the Internet to get customers phone numbers, names and addresses and used to phone and contact prospective customers. Because of their extensive use of computers they were able to contact customers take online applications and speed up the process of closing a mortgage. They became very famous and a lot of customers who could not get mortgage loans from leading mortgage companies due to low credit scores turned to Ameriquest and they used to give them mortgage loans. Ameriquest mortgage online payments system was a system Ameriquest introduced by which they accepted online mortgage installment payments. They used to cater for people who did not have good credit scores and sold them mortgage loans at high interest rates and closing costs.

However their customers soon started filing lawsuits against Ameriquest on various charges. In 1996 they paid $3 million in settlements for a lawsuit in which they were accused of targeting females, older people and minority borrowers and allowing their agents to add on 12% to the mortgage loan amount. In 2001 they were investigated by the Federal Trade Commission and settled a dispute with ACORN. On August 1, 2005 Ameriquest set aside $ 325 million to settle lawsuits that had been filed against it in California, Florida, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Georgia. In May 2006 Ameriquest announced the closure of all its detail offices across the United States. There were a number of Ameriquest mortgage law suits that had been filed in various courts. A number of Ameriquest mortgage loan holders also filed separate law suits against Ameriquest. Ameriquest mortgage customer service was highly questionable as they did not disclose all the terms of the mortgage to their customers. Ameriquest settlement has been done in a number of law suits that were filed against them.

Ameriquest mortgages were one of the leading mortgage companies in the USA and had a very large customer base throughout the country. They moved from state to state and had the highest rate of foreclosures due to their mortgage selling practices. A number of accusations that were brought against Ameriquest stated that the company discouraged customers from shopping around and they over charged them on mortgage loan closing and were involved in a number of mal practices. Ameriquest sale tactics have also been questioned in a number of Ameriquest lawsuits and they have been accused of pressurizing customers, over stating incomes and house values and when the customer was unable to meet the installment payments they went for foreclosure causing a lot of their customers to be rendered homeless.

Customer satisfaction scores for Ameriquest are currently at the lowest and they are no longer accepting mortgage loan applications. Although they still have a web site but they have stopped their mortgage sales. Since the Attorney General’s investigation of sub prime lenders Ameriquest have been embroiled in law suits.